Thursday, November 20, 2008

Here is a video link where you can see Dave Lindner discussing the capture of Sweetheart on the Finniss River. Sweetheart was a 5.1 metre crocodile that became infamous for attacking boats and capsizing them during the 70's in the Northern Territory.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I know this isn't a crocodile story but it sure has some resemblance to the usual stories. An eel attacking swimmers in a national park sparks debate on whether it should be moved on. Some of the comments are interesting. It's hard to conjure scary thoughts when picturing an eel compared to crocodile or shark stories. Perhaps the eel needs more graphic teeth!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The recent and unfortunate death of Arthur Booker has opened a can of worms in Queensland over their crocodile management program. In case you're not living in Australia, or you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, 62 year old Arthur Booker was taken by a crocodile on 30 September whilst checking crab pots on the Endeavour River near Cooktown.

This resulted in a lot of media stories covering the crocodile attack, usually with the most horrifying and impactful photos of crocodiles to accompany them.

Something like this...

The media focus certainly got people nervous about crocs and kept them in their minds.

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said yesterday that the 3.5m crocodile had been trapped near the Cape York community of Bamaga earlier this year and released more than 1000km south, in a creek near Townsville, as part of satellite tracking program Crocs in Space to see whether it would establish a new home range."

As you can imagine, a lot of people including tourists and local businesses weren't happy to find out his new home range now included Magnetic Island.

This created a storm with Queensland politicians looking for someone to blame and also trying to distance themselves from the issue. The next thing that occurred was a whistleblower reputed to be a wildlife ranger who wrote a letter to parliament. Among other things it said that relocated crocodiles that were part of the research project were believed to be responsible for the fatalities of Arthur Booker and Barry Jefferies in Lakefield National Park in 2005.

The truth is, this will probably have major repercussions for crocodile management in Queensland.The entire management programme has already been put up for review and a lot of questions will need to be asked to find out how it got to this stage. There are many opinions on the best approach for managing crocodiles and they are often very strong ones.

However regarding this entire issue we will be keeping our ears open with anticipation for future updates.

Hello, welcome to the Croc Spot, crocodiles always seem to be in the news around the world. Here in the Territory we have a lot of crocodile stories in the local media. Our local paper the NT News has a lot, and at the moment i think they are running a story daily. A lot of people here get annoyed by this but the truth is that crocodiles sell papers. General interest in crocs never goes away and certainly crocodiles are a major part of life here.I'll try and keep track of some of the major stories and add some useful commentary as things occur, so make sure you check back from time to time.

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The Croc Spot

Crocodiles are always in the news, for one reason or another and they certainly grab people's attention. This blog helps to explore further some of the issues and stories about crocodiles that make headline news

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About Me

I'm a biologist working on crocodiles with a business called Big Gecko along with my husband Adam.
We tend to spend a little too much time thinking about crocodiles!
I hope to communicate our thoughts to a wider audience so that hopefully people will understand crocodiles better.